A Rather Pleasant Week
The train ride from Zaragoza to Barcelona is surprisingly eventful. As I’m racing to the elevator to get my bike on the train (having timed things closely yet again), I run into another fellow with a bike and panniers. I go down first and get my bike on board and then help him get his bike on board and we talk for a bit. His name is Gorki (thats Basque for Jorge) and his plan is to bike around Corsica because he’s heard they are very anti-touristy and independent. He’s interested in that so off he goes with his reliable old bike. We talk off an on over the long train ride, slowly exhausting our combined Spanish and English but when we get to Barcelona we stay together for a bit, if only to watch our bikes while we go to the bathroom and later get food.
Later I begin to wonder if I’ve tapped into some sort of bike-packer mojo because as we sit in the park eating bananas, bread, and chorizo another grizzled fellow with panniers and bike rides up and casually says “Hola chicos.” This guy is a Polish dude who used to work in Iceland before the financial crisis. He reminds me *a lot* of Rene, the guy who motivated this entire trip in the first place, my peerless vagrant. I’d love to hang out longer but by this time I’m already burning serious daylight and my notes on my path are rather rough.
Biking out of the city turns out to be really pretty as it turns out there is a bike/pedway along the river (really, a creek) and I know that I don’t have to worry about getting back onto the road until there are bridges that cross it. After getting onto the road and going for a ways I roll into a towns traffic circle and find some perplexing signage. There are signs pointing me to Granollers, where I’m going, but the road number doesn’t match what I have written down. Sometimes its better to avoid following the signs and stay on your road, but going straight through the traffic circle doesn’t seem to have the right road number either. I figure following signs is better and follow them through a couple of intersections feeling pretty good about myself. Hell, there are signs from Granollers, so I must be pretty clo– OH MY GOD THAT IS A HIGHWAY ITS TOO LATE TO TURN AROUND, at which point I am reduced to yelling “QUE MAL! QUE MAL! QUE MAL!”
I spent most of the remainder of the ride humming rhythmic variants of “I’m going to die!” to myself. I don’t want to talk what trying to bike across a merging lane is like. Successfully merging onto my originally planned route is probably one of the single most satisfying/relieving experiences of my life. It gave my arrival something of a triumphant air when I finally made it to Sonia’s house.
Sonia is pretty wicked and should be on CouchSurfing in my opinion. If CS lost half its Spanish population and gained Sonia then the site would still have improved drastically. We go out to grab some food and drop by a student friend of hers where we talk a bit about sites and I first get twigged onto the existence of a George Orwell tour. When her friends ask who I am she says I’m her “okupa” which is what they call political squatters here. I think this is awesome. There are plans for actions on June 8th around the general surliness that local labour has reacted to government cutbacks with and I’m already pumped that I can tag along.
The remainder of the week is lazy. I don’t even do anything other than walk around Granollers for the first day. The next day I head into Barcelona really late in the day, run into an American when trying to site myself in front of a bus map so he tags along as I head into the heart of the city because he needs a hostel and I figure its more likely to be down there than anywhere else.
On the way we run into a squat. Or occupied building. I don’t know what the right term is, but its illegal and kind of awesome. We spend a good couple of hours at least (on top of some serious walking) just chilling out. They point me to the CNT bookstore where I spend another hour, and then I figure I should get back. The following day I want to try and find some Orwell/Civil War sites and succeed partially before I have to head to the squat because there is a hackspace scheduled for this evening. I blow an hour and a half there waiting (knowing spain, the thing would really only get started an hour after the schedule said) but the only people who show up look more like dumpster divers of the organic rather than electronic sort. I spend Friday in a bit of a funk, but in the evening some friends of Sonia’s are going up to Costa Brava for a weekend of boating. We drive out in a very nice compact SUV listening to good tunes as I watch the country-side roll by. I realize I miss music. This is reinforced at the end of the weekend and I resolve to recharge my Canadian phone so I can listen to it while I cycle (since my spanish phone is being a piece of shit about detecting that I have music).
I’m not entirely sure if was a language simplification or shorthand, but I’m told that everyone other than Sonia, Susanna, and I own factories on this weekend getaway. But hell, fuck it, I’ll balance fraternizing with class enemies by shit-disturbing everywhere else. Also, it was totally worth it. Costa Brava (and Tamariu in specific) is Capital-P Pretty. I’m MacArthuring a lot but there was definitely a “I will return” moment when I left. Our first night is pretty low-key but we settle in and plan for the boat ride tomorrow.
They have a life jacket which I eschew for the less embarrassing floaty yellow tube. Boats are awesome and I begin formulating a life-plan based around living on one after a fellow in a bigger boat who knew Ramone floated in and cooked some steak on HIS BARBECUE. I’m one of the few people who gets into the water with any frequency as apparently it is cold. It’s not warm, but I’ve been in worse, and all you gotta do is not sit on your ass. And the sun is shining so all you have to do is dry off and eventually you warm back up. Jordi tries out a kayak they have and he ends up flipping it after he gets quite a ways from the boat. Some people from another boat have to help him get back in. When Ramone’s buddy Pere-Juan (Pedro-Juan) shows up in his bigger boat we switch over and have a much-anticipated lunch there. As the sun wears on and I worry more about sunburn we make the trek back down the coast and we troop into our pension.
That evening (and the following lunch) I probably consume more seafood than I’ve eaten in my entire life (and this includes an attempt at salmon at Laura’s behest in Madrid). Shellfish is still, no matter how you look at it, fucking weird. But its ok, and sometimes the sauce is awesome. Well-prepared sea bass still doesn’t compete with good chicken, but it would be an excellent selection for a change of pace. This bodes well for the life-on-a-boat plan.